210 THE PRINCESS OF WALES [1814. 



Elizabeth Whitbread to take me. If she don't go, can 

 you get me admitted, in case I come there with my 

 nephew 1 Then, perhaps, we might get a little con- 

 versation after the business is over. I am afraid that 

 I am as great a plague to you as Lady Westmoreland 

 is to me ; but this is a critical moment. Adieu. Ever 

 truly yours, C. LINDSAY." 



Such was the state of things between the Princess 

 Charlotte and her father in July 1814, when he sud- 

 denly, by a message, let her know that her ladies were 

 to be changed, and that her establishment was to be 

 put on a new footing, about which she had not been 

 at all consulted. 



Having taken every possible precaution to avoid a 

 false step on the Princess's part, we had made up our 

 minds to the bitterest hostility being encountered by 

 her advisers. As all anxiety or doubt on that score 

 was at an end, we only had to await the event of our 

 measures, and certainly could not have hoped for such 

 an error as the adverse party at once committed, and 

 which immediately made the day our own. 



The Eegent thought he had devised a cunning way 

 of meeting the letter, of which he had intimation, on 

 the Princess requesting to know when and where it 

 would be received."'' 5 " His difficulty was to answer it ; 

 and he made Liverpool state that all communications 

 must be addressed to the ministers, for that as to the 

 letter he himself could neither receive nor read it. 

 There could not be a greater mistake, indeed a more 

 enormous blunder, than he and his advisers committed 

 in this refusal. Of course they must have presumed 



* See above, p. 160. 



